Weekend pay TV: March 2

Brad Newsome

THIS is quite the unusual little telemovie. It is occasionally amusing before growing progressively darker and having a couple of turnarounds that suddenly cast everything in a different light. It would also win any award for most startling yet strangely apt sex act in a TV movie. The drama centres on new neighbours Amy (Stephanie Lemelin) and Grace (Cybill's Alicia Witt), who bond over their young daughters and become best buddies despite Grace's husband (The Drew Carey Show's Diedrich Bader) being a silent, simmering kettle of resentment. When Grace suddenly stops talking to Amy, Amy is determined to find out why. Her increasingly desperate efforts begin to worry her husband (daytime soapie heart-throb Greg Vaughan). If Playdate seems oddly structured and episodic, that's because it was made so it could be shown as a movie, as four half-hour episodes, or as 13 six-minute shorts. It must have been quite the challenge for director Melanie Mayron (In Treatment), but the result is well worth a look.

Robot and Monster, Nickelodeon, 10.25am

A RAMBUNCTIOUS and endearing CGI animated series about the adventures of a little orange robot and a big purple monster. They live in a steampunk-looking world full of things destined for demolition. Robot, being the smart one, tends to get the worst of things - if only because Monster is better at absorbing physical punishment. Tonight they have to convince their landlord that Monster, and not the pet, has been eating the furniture.

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Napoleon Dynamite, Fox8, 8.35pm

Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez, the original Napoleon and Pedro, lend their voices to this new and mildly amusing animated series based on the 2004 movie.

Gok Cooks Chinese, LifeStyle Food, 6.30pm

Great little series in which fashion guru Gok Wan and his restaurateur father cook up simple but scrummy dishes. Tonight's include scallops with chilli sauce.

Memphis Beat, 13th Street, 6.30pm

Jason Lee plays a rock'n'roll detective.

Sunday

American Colony: The Hutterites, National Geographic, 8.30pm

THE Hutterite colony near Lewistown, Montana, comes across as being a kind of Amish-lite - there's a bit of drinking and swearing (among the menfolk, at least), there are a lot more mod cons, and a lot more contact with the outside world. But this comparative laxity extends only so far. On more important things, the word of the Hutterite religious elders is law, and to disobey it is to be exiled from the colony and shunned by family and friends. The cruelty of this is made clear tonight. The bright young Tammy turns 17 and so must leave her outside school - which she loves - and go to work in the colony kitchen. Well, that or be banished from the only home she has known. It's no choice at all, and the only protest Tammy can make is to defy the colony by going to school for one more day. Her mother's elation and relief at her acquiescence is sickening. American Colony has been clouded in controversy, with some of the Hutterites who appear in it claiming it was partly scripted and an unfair representation. Executive producer Jeff Collins contended the disavowals were made under threat of excommunication. Whatever the truth of it, the depressing basics of Hutterite life don't seem to be in dispute.

Happily Never After, CI, 7.30pm

A FAIRLY standard murder-doco series that doesn't benefit from the silly fairytale trappings and voice-over, nor from the carry-on of psychologist Wendy Walsh, who tries to emote every word that comes out of her mouth as if she were in her first amateur drama workshop.

When I Knew, Bio, 9.30pm

Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Becoming Chaz, Party Monster) ask people when they realised they were gay.

The Soup, E!, 8.30pm

A thoroughly enjoyable round-up of the week's televised idiocy. But there's no need for Joel McHale to be so unkind to Honey Boo Boo's mum.